Messages from the President - 2026

March 20, 2026

Students, Faculty and Staff,

The Providence Foundation’s Home & Garden Show is underway. The beautiful new Geri and Gordon Moulton Jaguar Marching Band Complex is open. The Southerners are readying the mud pits for their much-anticipated annual Oozeball tournament. And tomorrow, we welcome prospective students and their families to USA Day as we get ready to enroll a new class of Jaguars in the fall.

We’re investing in our students and our patients. Our community is giving back. Together, we’re building something bigger along the Gulf Coast at the University of South Alabama.

The Home & Garden Show comes during a season of planting and growth — in gardens and yards throughout Mobile, and also through our work at the University and USA Health. Building on the success of its predecessor, the Festival of Flowers, the Home & Garden Show opened last night to a preview party, to rave reviews. The inaugural exhibition comes into full bloom today through Sunday at the Mobile Convention Center. The proceeds benefit the new extracorporeal membrane oxygenation program, the only one of its kind in Alabama south of Birmingham, at USA Health Providence Hospital. Critically ill patients now can receive one of the most advanced forms of life support through the ECMO machine, which can take over lung and heart functions when conventional treatments fail.

A few weeks earlier, we opened the 25,000-square-foot, $13 million marching band complex, which includes a full-size, lighted practice field built to match the Abraham A. Mitchell Field at Hancock Whitney Stadium. The Jaguar Marching Band is one of our largest student organizations, with about 80% of its members majoring in a discipline other than music. Our students deserve the best, and that’s what they’re getting with this new facility. Once again, it’s an investment that could not have happened without the support of members of our community, including $2.5 million in gifts from Forever First Lady Geri Moulton, wife of our late President Emeritus Gordon Moulton. The two were instrumental in starting our marching band program with the introduction of Jaguar football back in 2009.

Investments like the marching band complex matter, not just to our current students, but also in recruiting new ones. It shows we’re all in on facilitating their success and providing them with an experience here that’s second to none. Dr. Andi Kent, our incredible executive vice president and provost, and I proudly talk about the new complex on the road — such as when we visited 17 high schools in central and north Alabama last month with our Enrollment Team — and it also will be highlighted tomorrow as part of USA Day. We’ll host nearly 2,000 prospective students and their families, so be sure to say hello if you see a new face or two around campus.

While our band members are some of South’s best ambassadors, our student ambassadors by official title, the Southerners, are getting ready for Oozeball, their annual mud volleyball tournament. The proceeds support their organization and the Spotting Excellence Scholarship — students investing in themselves. Dr. Kent and I will be there next weekend handing out spirit buttons, but we’ll be standing a healthy distance from the splatter zone!

In the coming months, you’ll be hearing more details about our intentions to continue investing in our people and our programs. We invite you to the capital campaign announcement on April 23 at 10 a.m. in the Student Center to learn how these plans will take shape.

At its core, this campaign is about our people and our progress. This means doing everything in our power to remove barriers that might keep someone from enrolling at South, making sure they have the tools to succeed once they’re here, supporting our student-athletes on and off the field, ensuring that we’re recruiting and retaining the best faculty, providing first-class academic healthcare to our communities, and building and maintaining facilities that match the quality of the education and medical care inside them.

Without question, your University of South Alabama is the educational, economic and cultural engine of the Gulf Coast. Growing that vibrant community takes all of us, and it is the direct result of the investments we are making together.

From high school gymnasiums and USA Day to the front lines of USA Health, where our work saves lives, we are making an undeniable case for the value of what we do, serving as the Flagship of the Gulf Coast.

Jo Bonner
President

February 4, 2026

Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff,

We are excited to announce that a new leader for the Frederick P. Whiddon College of Medicine has been selected from an impressive pool of candidates from across the U.S. In May, Dr. Jeffrey LaRochelle, associate dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine, will join the USA family and lead the college into the future. 

Dr. LaRochelle graduated from the University of Florida in 1991 with a B.A. in English and in 1998 with a B.S. in microbiology. In 2003, he received his Doctor of Medicine from Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences followed by a Master of Public Health in 2010 from the same institution. We know that Dr. LaRochelle's extensive experience will benefit the Whiddon College of Medicine as we prepare to celebrate the opening of the college's new building early next year and begin accepting more students into the program.

We look forward to welcoming Dr. LaRochelle and his wife, Kim, to Mobile and the Flagship of the Gulf Coast.